


The Bells of St. Vincent

by bitochondria



Series: Like Butch and Sundance [2]
Category: Wiseguy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Fingering, Angst, Angst and Porn, Bisexual Vinnie Terranova, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Behavior, Developing Relationship, Frank's perspective on the events of S3, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Not A Fix-It, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, POV Third Person Limited, Past Relationship(s), Period Typical Attitudes, Reasonably Canon Compliant, Reluctantly Bisexual Frank McPike, SO YOURS HAS TO BE TOO, Season/Series 03, Secret Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues, ha ha ha lol my heart is broken over s3 ending like that and then going to s4, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29341785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitochondria/pseuds/bitochondria
Summary: Frank's inability to keep his hands off Vince is a major cause for concern. More concerning, however, is the possibility that he might be falling in love with him-- just in time to lose him, find him, and lose him one last time.--The McPike take on the back half of Season Three, leading into Season Four. Angst, punctuated by sex!
Relationships: Frank McPike/Vinnie Terranova, Past Sonny Steelgrave/Vinnie Terranova
Series: Like Butch and Sundance [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185941
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Bells of St. Vincent

Vince wasn’t an ingenue, but sometimes, sometimes, he was so stupid he may have been a giant overgrown child. Frank knew that he should’ve been able to be the adult, to say no, to not get tripped up by that smirking tough guy charm. But he wasn’t made of stone. He liked Vince— really  _ liked _ him, and when they weren’t arguing, Vince knew better than anyone how to make him laugh, usually despite himself. He was probably the best friend he had had in years, (a thought which was, Frank realized, depressing as hell.) That he was tall and handsome and physically  _ very  _ affectionate should have been a bonus, but these days Frank mostly found it irritating. 

He had told him, already, there could be no more of that. 

Vince wasn’t a very good listener. 

Nonetheless, Frank could only really blame himself for the fact that he was currently on the edge of a bed in a DC hotel room with Vince’s mouth on his throat and his hands on his buttons. 

Frank sighed internally. It had been his fault the first time, too. Vince had just been playing around, and he had just  _ had _ to call his bluff. This time, he really should have known better. He should’ve stepped away as soon as the hug had stopped being about reassurance. The moment Vince’s nose had brushed against his ear, he should’ve grabbed his suitcase and reminded Vince that they did, in fact, have a plane to catch. 

But he didn’t, and now he had an erection, and his best agent was well on his way to giving him a very visible love bite that he was not going to be able to explain when they got back to headquarters. 

Vince finished undoing his button-down and pulled it off Frank’s shoulders, mouth still glued to his neck. Frank, apparently incapable of taking a single step in the direction of good decision making, pulled it the rest of the way off, and loosed his undershirt from his waistband. Vince caught Frank’s fingers beneath his own and pulled the garment up over his head, releasing his lips from Frank’s flesh just long enough to strip him. He knelt on the floor between Frank’s legs and started undoing his belt buckle.

“Vince,” Frank cautioned, palming Vince’s fuzzy buffalo head, “If we’re going to do this, can I at least not be the only one with my pants down?”

Vince looked up at him from between his legs, pupils blown out in his husky-blue eyes. 

The  _ smart  _ thing to do would have been to tell him to  _ stop _ , but apparently smart was off the menu today. 

“Sorry,” Vince smirked, exposing his wonderfully crooked eyeteeth. “Got a little excited.” He stood up and loosened the knot on his tie, eyes hot on Frank as he unbuttoned his collar. 

Frank felt himself going warm. He kind of hated that Vince looked at him like that— like he was something worth lusting over. He knew, theoretically, that Vince meant it, but since Vince was also the best actor he knew, it could be a little hard to shake the feeling that he was just having a laugh at Frank’s expense.

He decided to speed up the striptease a little and get those eyes off his face. Leaning forward, he hastily undid Vince’s belt and pulled his pants down. Vince tossed his tie and his shirt aside as Frank tugged on the waistband of his boxers. Vince’s cock sprang loose, big as life. It was an impressive appendage, the sight of which made Frank’s own erection twitch against his briefs. During the weeks of their ill-advised earlier dalliance, they had danced around the subject of Vince making an attempt at penetration, but Frank had broken it off before they managed to squeeze it in. So to speak. He sure as hell wasn’t going to try an hour before airplane travel. 

Naked except his dress socks— Frank wished he hadn’t noticed that— Vince knelt back down and proceeded to pull Frank’s pants off. Frank shimmied out of his briefs and Vince pressed his lips to the side of his cock. 

This was such an unbelievably pigheaded idea. 

Vince placed one hand on Frank’s hip and cupped the far side of his erection, flattening his tongue and running it up the length of his shaft. He made a soft o-shape with his lips and rubbed them down the side, tongue darting out to lick this way and that. These ministrations— soft lips, an occasional light brushing of teeth, the smooth glide of his tongue— went on long enough that Frank’s thighs were clenching before Vince even put his mouth over the head. 

He tugged slightly on Vince’s hair, fingers interlaced at the back of his neck. Vince made a very pleasant noise and continued licking. Frank tugged again, trying and failing to get his attention.

If he let it, this would go on until they missed their flight. Frank had had the unbelievable misfortune of guarding Amber Twine’s hotel room after he had ended his fling with Vince; one night one of the other OCB agents suggested that, considering the quantity and duration of the noises Amber was making, she was probably a  _ very _ good actress, because no man was that invested in going down on someone for that long. Frank, who knew quite intimately that Vince was just very dedicated to his craft, had told the other agent that if he ever talked about sex in front of him again, he’d have him court-marshalled.  _ Why not,  _ he had thought at the time. Everyone already thought of him as a humorless curmudgeon. 

Good god, this was such a stupid decision.

“Vin.” Frank let loose his grip on Vince’s hair and tapped him on the head. “I appreciate your commitment to the fine art of lovemaking, but we have a plane to catch.”  _ And, _ he added internally,  _ shouldn’t be doing this anyway. _

Vince looked up, a slight pout on his reddening lips. He seemed to contemplate this fact as if it were entirely new information. He blinked. “What would you like me to do?” 

“Nothing in particular,” Frank muttered, looking at the pattern in the carpet, rubbing at his jaw, “I just don’t want to have to explain that we’re late because we decided we should christen your room before we left.” 

Vince snorted. “Okay, okay, I hear ya.” He grabbed behind Frank’s knees as he stood, all in one quick movement, and deposited him wholesale on the bed. Frank suspected that if he had any dignity, it would be feeling a little bruised. He straddled him, pinning one wrist to the bed. Swallowing, Frank closed his eyes. It was mortifying how much his dick liked it when Vince manhandled him. 

The tip of Vince’s nose traced the bridge of Frank’s, and their lips brushed, soft and dry. With his free hand, Vince cupped Frank’s cheek, looking him in the eye for many seconds longer than was comfortable. He looked like he wanted to say something, but they were both being unusually reticent today. Every other time they had fucked, if their mouths weren’t otherwise occupied, they were arguing or joking or both. 

At least, Frank conceded, that probably meant that Vince also knew this was a complete suspension of sane judgement. That it would just be this one last time and they could move on with their lives.

Vince kissed the corner of Frank’s mouth, and Frank tilted into it, giving Vince access. His tongue pushed between his lips, and Frank arced against him. Vince trailed the tips of his fingers down Frank’s face, his neck, his chest, as he kissed him, tongue pressed to tongue, hot and wet and suffocating. His fingers played over the patchy hair on Frank’s stomach, down to his cock. He gave it a few tentative strokes, in time with the movement of his tongue, his other hand still firm on Frank’s wrist. Frank had enough dignity not to thrust into his hand, but only just barely. 

He was going to come with Vince’s tongue in his mouth, and then they were going to have to get on an airplane and talk to each other like normal human beings. Just for a moment, he thought—  _ why am I letting him do this? _ — before silently chastising himself for putting the blame on Vince. He  _ wanted _ Vince to fuck him silly, he just didn’t  _ want _ to want it. 

Frank felt Vince’s cock slide up alongside his, and they were thrusting together, hot and tight in Vince’s hand. He kept Frank pinned, now with his thighs and his hand, mouth open soft and expectant against the corner of Frank’s mouth. With his unpinned hand, Frank reached up and grabbed the back of Vince’s neck, dragging his lips against his lips, pressing his tongue to Vince’s tongue, both of them making desperate muffled noises as they ground their hips together. 

Such an unbelievably bad idea. And god, oh god, it felt so good. 

Vince came first, and Frank could feel the splash of heat on his belly. With cum on his fingers and the tip of his cock, Vince’s grip became slick. Frank ground against his cock and his hand, hoping the heat of Vince’s mouth could keep him muffled from making any embarrassing noises. He followed quickly, shuddering through climax as Vince kissed him. 

They barely made their flight.

It should have been a one time thing, an awkward relapse into bad habits. Frank wasn’t stupid— he knew they were both still attracted to each other, but he also figured he had made it clear to Vince the first time around why it just wouldn’t work. Even ignoring all the professional reasons an agent should absolutely not be fucking their superior officer, Frank was technically still married. Even if she never wanted to speak to him again, in the legal sense, Frank was very much cheating on Jenny. With a 32 year old man, like some kind of geriatric senator visiting Fire Island for the weekend. 

And yet somehow, Frank found himself sharing a beer and a gingerbread bundt cake (posted First Class from Carlotta, and hand-delivered to Frank’s bungalow) with Vince late on Christmas Eve, which consequently led to sharing a bed with Vince into Christmas morning. He was mortified, but at least his recurring alarm went off and he wasn’t late to see Drake. Vince was back again the following evening; they made an effort to pretend they were just there to shoot the shit, bitch a little about their respective families, and the one thing led to another and Frank was pressed up against a wall with Vince on his knees in front of him. 

Then, a week later, after a night of drunken, soppy lovemaking, Frank woke up in Vince’s bed on New Year’s day. The bed was empty but still warm, and the smell of cooking bacon made Frank’s chest hurt, for reasons both emotional and cholesterol-related. After that, he tried very hard to make himself scarce. He had ‘meetings’ here and there, needed to take care of Drake, had a phantom dentist appointment crop up, needed to go deliver documents to someone… anything to avoid spending time alone with Vince. He made the mistake one day of claiming he needed to go bring his car to the shop. Vince spent the next two hours under his hood, ultimately proclaiming that Frank had ‘vehicular hypochondria,’ slapping him a little too close to his ass for a public road, and laughing about how his mother  _ also _ experienced car sounds made by gremlins.

The frustrating thing was, Frank  _ liked _ spending time alone with Vince, even without sex ever being involved. Even at his most childish and obnoxious, Frank felt like Vince didn’t require him to  _ be _ something or  _ do _ something. That all he really wanted from him was camaraderie and understanding. Frank enjoyed his company, and appreciated that he understood the value of comfortable silence. But when he was alone with Vince, it was like there was a shifty little lawyer in the back of his mind, whispering traitor thoughts like:  _ if Vince were Vicky, would anyone care? You remember what happened with Agent Dukowski and Sarah Hitchcock— they barely got a slap on the wrist. _ Or worse:  _ It’s not even the job that’s really the issue, is it? It’s how a man like you is going to look to his son if anyone ever finds out. Assuming Jenny even lets you see him ever again, he’d never be able to look you in the eye. _ Or worst of all— just the quiet, thrumming insistence that he was  _ happy _ when he was on Vince’s couch, his giant bear arm draped over his shoulders. 

If he didn’t see Vince, then the ghost of Benedict Arnold, Esquire, laid himself to rest. 

He didn’t have to think about how Vince fit into his plans and his personal life if he didn’t let Vince keep inserting himself into them. 

So the last thing he wanted was for Vince to be the one to help him deal with the rehoming of one Big Mike McPike. 

Vince was overly familiar from the word go, treating Mike like one of his Old Men in the mob, or worse, like a fucking in-law. Frank’s whole damn body went cold and limp like washed up seaweed in midwinter when Mike asked, with that  _ tone _ in his voice, who Vince  _ was _ . 

“Who’s this guy?” He sounded disgusted. He sounded like he  _ knew _ , somehow. Like it was that obvious that Vince was, for all intents and purposes, Frank’s goddamn side piece. Mike had always said Frank was a sissy, that he needed to ‘man up,’ that he was ‘soft.’ He knew. He could see right through him and he knew. 

“That’s my friend Vince,” Frank explained, immediately regretting the word ‘friend.’ Coworker. Colleague. Underling—  _ no, maybe not that one _ . But ‘friend’ was a misstep. He tried to recover, adding, “You met him.”

Vince was charmed by the old codger, and picked up the banter as soon as Mike suggested he was a ‘hood.’ 

On the one hand, fuck Vince for playing along, but on the other hand, okay, maybe that’s where the disgust was coming from. Maybe he thought it was weird that an OCB agent was palling around with a lowlife, not that his son was sexually involved with a man.

“Francis ever arrest you?”

Vince smiled broad and wide, absolutely dripping mischief. His eyes darted to Frank’s face. “Every chance he gets.”

_ Fuck you, Vince!  _ Frank screamed internally.  _ Do not make insinuations in front of my fucking father! _

Aloud, he very quietly muttered, “Don’t encourage him.”  _ Don’t give him any ammo _ . 

When Frank explained that Mike was going to have to stay with him for a few days, Mike was silent. In the rearview mirror, Frank could see his eyes darting back and forth between him and Vince.

The tone of disdain returned, quiet and menacing. “He’s staying too?”

“ _ No _ ,” Frank spat, “Vince is not staying.” His words were as much for Vince as for his father. Vince made a face— opening his mouth slightly and cocking his jaw to one side, eyebrows raised— like a pissed off teenager ready to rattle off a thousand sarcastic comebacks. Frank cut him off. “We’re taking him to the train station.”

He knew he was going to get balled out later, but he didn’t really care. He needed Vince out of his familial affairs, now. 

At the station, Vince quietly requested, “Can I talk to you for a second?” And tilted his head toward the car door, indicating outside.

Frank sighed. “Make it quick.”

They stepped a few paces away from the car.

“I’m just trying to help, Frank.” 

“No, you’re antagonizing me and baiting an old man.” Frank roughly rubbed his whole mouth with his palm, trying not to bare his teeth or say something worse. 

Vince stood with his hands in his pockets, looking hurt and childish. “Let me do something for you, please. I could go pick up takeout, or grab some retirement community brochures, or…” 

“I don’t need your help.” Frank crossed his arms. “Let me deal with this. It’s not your problem.”

“I could stay with you—”

“And what!?” Frank bellowed, and then dropped to a tense, spitting whisper. “He takes the one bed and you and I sleep on the couch together, like  _ pals _ , like friends do? Give him another reason to suspect we’re an item?” He felt one side of his mouth curl up and he hissed, “You  _ heard  _ the way he asked about you. Mama Terranova is a sweet old lady who’s never thought a bad thing about her son  _ once _ in her life— if you think for a  _ second _ that  _ that  _ old goat hasn’t been waiting to yell ‘aha! I always knew you were a pansy’ at me since I was four years old, then you—”

Vince sneered, nodding, looking genuinely hurt, and genuinely angry. “Oh, so the full year that my mother and the rest of my family by extension  _ disowned me _ , that was nothing. And the fact that the only member of my family I’ve ever told about…  _ me _ is  _ dead _ , that’s nothing, too.” He crossed his arms and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “But yeah, me offering to help you, that’s gonna make your elderly father call Focus on the Family.” 

Frank took a deep breath in, looking up to the sky and pressing his lips together between his teeth. 

“I’m sorry,” he exhaled, and then took another long deep breath in. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, closing his eyes as well.

He sighed, and joked, totally deadpan, “Well, he’s definitely going to think we’re a couple if we keep arguing like this.”

Vince snorted, and then blinked slowly as he breathed in as well. He pursed his lips slightly and looked at Frank with withering sympathy. “Call me if you need anything?”

Frank nodded, intending very honestly not to need anything.

He hadn’t meant to wound him, but he really, really needed him to go home.

Unfortunately, he ended up needing  _ someone _ sooner rather than later. His father started harping on Jenny, and marriage, and what it meant to be a man and the head of a household almost instantly. Frank made an unsuccessful attempt to explain that it was a ‘separation’ in the sense of ‘leading inevitably to divorce,’ and not ‘separation’ in the sense of ‘a trial period.’ Mike didn’t buy it, and he continued to bring Jenny into every conversation on every possible topic. Takeout—‘Jenny’s such a good cook’— the lumpiness of Frank’s mattress—’well, if you had a  _ real _ bed, the kind a  _ man _ sleeps on’— the lack of decor in Frank’s home—’what do you expect without a woman’s touch’— Frank was seriously considering self-immolation.

Sometime around the three-hundredth time he brought it up, he also commented on a curiosity in Frank’s bathroom.

“If your wife isn’t speaking to you, why the hell are there two toothbrushes in here?” With that same sneer in his voice, he added, “Is it the hood’s?”

Frank froze, standing in the living room. If he argued, he’d want to know  _ whose _ it was. He could invent a woman, but then Mike was either going to berate him for cheating on  _ sweet, delicate Jenny _ , or he was going to ask to meet this nonexistent broad. 

“Yes, actually,” he admitted, feigning exasperation, and then launched into a lie, “Vince has to stay sometimes when we’re working. It’s exactly as annoying as you’d think it is.” 

“I knew it was a man’s toothbrush,” Mike chuckled wheezily, triumphant.

“What the hell is a ‘man’s toothbrush,’ pop? One you can use to itch your balls?” 

“Don’t be crass, Francis. No wonder Jenny doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Frank eyed the letter opener on the side table, and contemplated driving it into his thigh. 

Eventually, Mike decided to use Jenny as ransom— reconcile with your wife or have a permanent house guest in the form of one horrible crotchety old man. Reluctantly, Frank called Vince. He needed someone to prevent Mike from going and sexually harassing the local knitting club or getting in a fist fight with his neighbors, and he had no one else to call.

Vince was embarrassingly good-natured about the whole thing, which made it much harder to be angry at him when he got unceremoniously duped by Big Mike. 

He asked him if it was the quarter trick that did it, and Vince stood there, like a big dumb puppy, holding a beer bottle to his bruised face. He nodded. Frank left the kitchen, paced in a half-circle, and came back, trying not to be too frustrated— Mike was safe, and Vince was only contused. 

“ _ Why _ ’d you go along with it?” Frank moaned.

“He’s an old man! I figured I had the advantage.”

“You know, the mob rule that you don’t  _ make it _ to ‘old man’ unless you’re tougher than everyone else may apply here, as well, Vince.” 

“He’s your dad!”

“Yes, and he’s also an asshole.” 

“Well, I won’t fall for it again.”

“There won’t be an  _ again _ , we’re doing dinner tomorrow and then post-haste he’s finding a new place to stay.” Frank leaned back against the wall, exhausted by the mere thought of it. “Now would you get me one of those beers?” 

The next few days were excruciatingly hard. 

Frank wasn’t a crier, but on the way back from the nursing home, he found himself gasping, with a sticky lump and his throat a persistent tickle in his sinuses. He steeled himself not to erupt into full blown weeping. He had spent so much of his life being yelled at, disparaged, belittled, outright bullied by this man— so why was he so damn sad? 

Why had his life become a series of acrimonious departures, people telling him off and abandoning him? 

...why was Vince’s truck parked in his driveway?

In the cabin of his sedan, Frank rubbed at his eyes. He suddenly regretted giving Vince a key. Before he stepped out of the car, he checked his face in the rearview mirror. Puffy-eyed. Nothing he could do about it. He took a deep breath and went inside. He just wanted to be left alone today, but he knew Vince wasn’t going to have any of that.

He slammed the door as he entered.

“Frank,” Vince immediately answered, up on his feet, pity in his voice, “You okay?” 

“No, I am not okay.” Frank suppressed the crack and the waver in his voice. “Don’t take this personally, but you should go home.”

Vince’s hand was on his cheek. Frank flinched slightly, looking down at the floor.

“Are you crying?” His thumb stroked a gentle path down Frank’s jaw, and Frank resented every second of it. 

“I was,” Frank grumbled, “And I don’t want to talk about it, and I want to just… drink a beer, turn on the TV, and pretend today didn’t happen.”

Vince's hand was still on his cheek. "Sure. We don't have to talk about it." He smiled, sweet and reassuring, and leaned in to kiss Frank on the forehead. 

Frank pulled to the side, away from his hand and his lips. "You're not listening. Go home."

Now Vince’s hands were on his elbows, tight enough to steady, loose enough to be clear he was being  _ gentle  _ and  _ understanding _ . "Frank, I'm happy to just be here if you need me. There's nothing I want from you, I just… if you want to talk, I'm here, if you just want me to be quiet—"

" _ Goddammit, Vince! _ " Frank growled, roughly pulling out of his grip. "You. Are. Not. My.  _ Boyfriend _ . Stop acting like we're a goddamn couple! Stop acting like my family bullshit has  _ anything _ to do with you. Stop with this whole ‘I’m-going-to-protect-you’-bullshit, because I’m a grown man and I don’t  _ need _ protecting.” 

Vince’s dark brow furrowed into a tight line over his eyes. His mouth curled into something halfway between disgust and hurt. 

Frank sighed. “I care about you, Vince. I do. But we’re friends who’ve made some bad decisions together, not a matched set.” He crossed his arms and shrugged with his shoulders. “That’s why I called it off the last time.” 

“Yeah,” Vince nodded, pinching his mouth up in frustration. “I know. But as your  _ friend _ , I figured it was within my rights to check in on you. ‘Cause I care about you, too.”

Shaking his head ever so slightly, Frank clenched his jaw. “Just not tonight. ‘Check in on me’ in a couple of days, if you have to. I need tonight.” 

“Okay.” He still looked hurt, but Vince acquiesced. “If you change your mind, I can be here as soon as you need me.”

The right thing to do would be to say ‘thank you.’ Frank couldn’t summon the words. He nodded, taciturn, arms still crossed. Vince clasped him on the shoulder and departed without another word. 

Frank collapsed, face down on the couch, and wondered with dawning horror if maybe his father was right. Maybe he did just miss the security and consistency of marriage. He knew he missed some version of Jenny— but he didn’t know this new clean-living, high-powered catering guru well enough to know if she was even close to that version. Maybe assuming divorce was inevitable was merely a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if he just prostrated himself, made it clear he could change, too, convinced her there was still something there— maybe he could just go back to when things weren’t so complicated. And if he were back with Jenny, Vince would stop acting like he was ready to give him his class ring and his letterman jacket. 

He fell asleep in a pool of his own misery, thinking about how to convince a woman who clearly hated him to take him back.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a plan born of aching desperation and concocted in a face-down stew of self-loathing, based on the advice of an old man whose number one hobby was sexual harassment, it didn’t work. 

It almost worked.

Well, no. It almost worked  _ well enough _ that he’d probably have ended up moving back in for a couple of months before he and Jenny started screaming at each other again.

Or maybe even that was wishful thinking— and really it only almost worked well enough that he convinced Jenny to be stupid with him for a single night. 

But as soon as she was reminded of who he really was—  _ what _ he really was— she was gone again. And Frank knew, deep in his guts, that this time was the last time. 

He sat in a hard-backed chair in the local police station, waiting. They were speaking to all parties on the scene; Royce  _ was _ an OCB problem, but his actions— housebreaking, hostage-taking, assault— weren’t usually their jurisdiction. Jenny had also made it very clear she wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t an OCB agent, and Frank understood. The idea that, after all this, now she wasn’t going to feel safe in her own home anymore made Frank’s stomach churn. It’d be his fault, entirely, if she relapsed. 

Vince wandered over from the interrogation room and handed Frank a cup of steaming, burnt-smelling police station coffee. “Don’t yell at me, but…” He sat down beside him, gently elbowing him. “You okay?”

Frank sighed, letting his eyes flutter closed in exasperation. “No. No, I am not okay. I don’t know if I can remember the last time I was ‘okay,’ Vince.”

Vince just nodded, eyes cast out over the sea of people in the station. “I think that might just be the way it is for people like you and me.” 

Considering the conditions, they sat in reasonably comfortable silence. 

After a while, Frank stretched his legs out, yawning.

“I don’t think she’s going to take me back.”

Vince, bless him, knew Frank was making a joke. One side of his mouth went up and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Really? I hadn’t gathered.” 

Frank half-smiled back at him, head flopped against the wall behind him.

“I’m sorry.” He shrugged. “About the other day. And about… all of this.”

Vince nodded, looking off to the side. “She’s your wife, Frank. I get it.” He took a sip of his coffee. “And it’s hardly your fault Sid took a trip to Freak-Out City.” 

The serenity with which Vince seemed to be taking everything that had happened in the last forty-eight to seventy-two hours was almost alarming. Frank had all but told him to fuck off, tried to get back together with his estranged wife, and ended up in a shootout with a mob accountant Vince had thought he had put away. And yet, here he was, sipping coffee in that light blue muscle shirt, looking more like he had he had some inconvenient errands to do than a handler who was in a full-blown mid-life crisis. 

_ Oh god _ .

That was what was happening, wasn’t it?

This was a midlife crisis. 

_ I’m a cliche, _ Frank sighed, inwardly.  _ Divorce, dying parent, career discontentment, erratic behavior, a new young, hot side piece— _ Christ almighty, soon he was going to buy a Mustang and get a piercing, wasn’t he?

Chewing on his lip, Vince’s eyes made a semicircle from the door of the room where they were still talking to Jenny, to the floor, and then just to the right of Frank, stopping short of actually looking at him. 

“If you don’t mind my asking…” He tiptoed, clearly concerned he was going to get bitched out again, “Why did you decide to try again?”

Frank crossed his arms, immediately defensive. 

“Why did  _ you _ try again with Amber?”

Vince turned directly to Frank, making that scrunched-up teenage ‘yeah right’ face he made when he was pissed off and about to be venomously sarcastic. “Because you and Uncle Mike  _ made me _ .” He took a deep breath in, rolling his eyes. “And besides, I wasn’t trying again with Amber. I knew it was hopeless.” He shrugged, suddenly fully earnest. “I just needed closure.” 

Frank sighed. He had kind of forgotten that he and Dan had been the ones who told Vince to give it one last go. It had been motivated by very much the same sentiment, he now realized, as trying to give it one last go with Jenny: if either of them were in a serious long-term relationship with a woman, they weren’t going to keep ending up in bed together.

Feeling immensely sheepish, he elbowed Vince the same gentle, apologetic way Vince had when he had sat down. “You know, for a kid, you maybe have a better handle on all this stuff than I do.”

Vince gave Frank an inscrutable look. “I know you don’t see me that way. But assuming I was still a kid before then, I definitely haven’t been a kid since spending eighteen months in prison.” 

Cold washed immediately over Frank’s bones. He didn’t  _ know _ Vince, then, but it was his fault it had happened that way. Once, a long time ago, Vince had tried to talk to him about what had happened to him there, and Frank had used every possible conversational tool to shut him the hell up. He hadn’t wanted to know. Hadn’t wanted to feel sympathy for him, hadn’t wanted to get that close to him, hadn’t wanted to know what it was he had damned this poor schmuck to in making him carry out the full sentence. 

This was the first time Vince had brought it up since then. 

Frank knew they needed to have a serious conversation about it. That that part of their relationship was well overdue for a reckoning. But Vince just patted him gently on the knee and stood up.

“I think you need to do what you can to get some closure with Jenny, Frank.” He shrugged. “And I’m saying that as a friend.” 

To anyone listening, it sounded like Vince meant:  _ as opposed to a colleague _ . Frank understood the real subtext. He wanted Frank to get closure for himself, not for some imagined relationship between the two of them. 

“I gotta go take a leak,” Vince announced, and then he was already three, four, five paces away. He tossed his empty coffee cup in a bin as he went, and Frank watched him as he strolled down the hall, hands in his pockets. 

Frank rubbed his eyes. God, he needed to get his act together. 

He promised himself he’d get his act together. 

He’d talk to Jenny, when all this was over— real talk. Tell her everything, get that closure, part on better terms. 

And he’d be better to Vince. 

If it was depressing that  _ he _ only had a handful of friends, all through work, it was a hell of a lot more depressing that the same was true of an affable, giving young guy like Vince. There was nothing to be gained for either of them from pushing him away. 

Frank was simply scared of what that might mean going forward. If he stopped holding Vince at arm’s length, what would become of the distance between them?

Over the next few weeks, they fell back into familiar patterns, but for better or worse, not back into bed. They started a new case, shipped out to Washington, and Vince went back undercover. Frank had intended to stay well out of the way in this one— he could hardly pull his usual ‘OCB officer with a vendetta against criminal Vincent Terranova specifically’ routine if Vince was supposed to be a cop— but a few days in Vince suggested he reserve a room locally, under a different name, just in case he needed him to stay one night. Something was rotten in the state of Lynchboro, and it wasn’t just Volcheck. Frank had never taken a vacation to rural Washington before, but that’s kind of what it felt like booking a room—  _ National Lampoon’s Corrupt Hicksville Escapade _ , or something. 

The subject of Frank’s love life managed to remain off the table until late that evening, over cups of stale-tasting coffee at the completely empty hotel bar. They shouldn’t really have been fraternizing, but it’s not like anyone was around to see them. Vince leaned in close. 

In a barely audible whisper, he asked, “So do you really ‘love a man in uniform?’”

Frank almost choked on his drink. He responded, equally quiet, unable not to smirk, “Yeah, actually.” He raised his eyebrows slightly at Vince, a gesture hovering between mild perversion and defeat. “I was very disappointed that cadets in training for the OCB didn’t have to wear anything specific.”

“Oh yeah,” Vince nodded. “That was a relief for me.” 

“You don’t even follow dress code, Vince, of course you’d be anti-uniform.”

Vince’s whisper got even quieter, barely a mumble, intelligible through lip-reading more than anything else. “I mean, if you’re into that, I don’t mind, I could get out the cuffs, maybe Mirandize you a little…” 

Frank kicked him under the bar and Vince immediately started laughing, wheezy and self-satisfied. Similarly sotto-voce, Frank responded, “I think it’s a good look, I didn’t say I was into roleplay.” 

One of Vince’s bushy eyebrows crept upwards. Still whispering, leaning in close enough that Frank could feel the heat coming off his body, he asked, “So when was it you  _ dabbled _ , then? With the police? Army?”

The first time they had slept together, Frank had made the mistake of characterizing his sexual experience with other men as ‘dabbling,’ and Vince had  _ never  _ let him live it down. Anytime anyone said it in a nonsexual context, Frank could feel Vince’s eyes on his face, sense the smirk creeping up his lips, even if he was twelve paces behind him. 

The phrasing should have annoyed him, but Vince’s tone— soft like fingertips over fabric— and his proximity made him want to loosen his tie instead. 

“Army,” he muttered. “I’m ordering a topic change.” He leaned back, out of Vince’s personal warm front. “All this whispering is going to make people suspicious.”

“Oh yeah,” Vince muttered, one eyebrow cocked, gesturing around the bar. “People.” He sipped his coffee and made a face. “You know, this is really awful?”

“Every drink I’ve had in this town is awful, including the water.” 

“Least your room doesn’t smell like the remains of the last occupant.” 

“Not getting better, huh?”

“I’m starting to worry  _ I’m _ going to smell like a corpse by the end of this.”

“You smell fine,” Frank assured him, meaning it without subtext. 

“Aww, thanks, Frank.” 

“Well, you know how the OCB cares about your personal grooming.” 

Vince snorted. 

“How’s Uncle Mike? Trip to Seattle doin’ him good?”

“Your Uncle Mike seems to be having a much better time than either of us, but he’s been cagey on the details.” Frank picked a dark, flakey non-liquid something out of his coffee cup. “I think he might be getting laid.”

“Good for him,” Vince nodded, clearly just making random conversation. He sipped his terrible coffee again, looking down at his hands. He placed his cup on the counter and turned them palms up, as if he were looking for some kind of evidence, residue. 

After what felt like a very long time, he looked at Frank over his shoulder. Very quietly, but not in a sultry whisper, he asked, “I know you’re not actually planning on staying here tonight, and it’s fine if the answer is no. But would you be okay with me coming up to…” He paused, the look in his eye making it very clear that Frank needed to be listening to his intentions and not his words. “Talk over the details of the case, later?”

Frank knew it was coming, and he had no excuse not to say yes. It was over with Jenny. Vince had no prospects. They weren’t arguing anymore, not like they had been. And they were truly, deeply alone, here in Lynchboro, about as safe from discovery as they could ever be. There was simply a wide swath of horizon stretched out between them, an open, terrifying, uncharted span of questions and things left unspoken.

Maybe it would just be sex. 

But maybe it wouldn’t be.

He downed the rest of his coffee-scented swamp water and nodded. “Yeah. That’d be really helpful.” 

“Great,” Vince nodded as well, very collegial, very professional. 

And then the interminable task of making hotel-bar-appropriate small talk until whenever ‘later’ was stretched out before them. They looked at each other expectantly, breathing shallow and quiet. Frank started thinking about Volcheck, who believed he had Vinnie under his thumb, and how at any moment he might be called to his aid. They might miss their chance.

“Now’s good,” he suggested, voice cracking slightly. He swallowed.

The moment his door was shut, Vinnie’s hands were under his shirt, and Vinnie’s lips were tracing a line up his jaw. 

“How thin do you think the walls here are?”

Vince looked around as he loosened Frank’s tie. “Very. But I think you’re the only guest.” 

“I’m just thinking,” Frank explained, unbuttoning Vinnie’s pants, “That if Volcheck finds out you’re fucking a federal agent, you might lose some of your credibility.” 

“Nah,” Vinnie shook his head, unbuckling Frank’s belt, “I’m a corrupt cop, you’re a corrupt fed, we both get horny over corruption, one thing leads to another, oldest story in the book.” 

Frank snorted, pulling his shirt up over his head. “You don’t think he’d have a problem thinking you’re gay? Lynchboro probably doesn’t host any pride parades, Vince.”

“I think he already thinks I’m gay,” Vince laughed, leaning in to kiss the hollow of Frank’s neck. “Since I didn’t want to take a celebratory trip to the brothel with him.” 

“Huh.” Frank drew his fingertips down Vince’s now bare back, down to the waistband of his jockeys, down over his ass to the cleft of his thigh, and then cupped his ass in his hands as Vince kissed him on the throat and chest. “I’d have assumed he was pretty retrograde on social issues.” 

Vince’s tongue trailed down Frank’s chest. He stopped with a soft brush of the tip over one of Frank’s nipples, both embarrassing and, alas, deeply hot. 

He stood back up to full height.

“Are you totally, for real okay with this?”

Frank was not totally, ‘for real’ okay with this. Frank was rarely totally, ‘for real’ okay with  _ anything _ . There was always doubt, alway a reason to back out, always reasons to second guess. So instead of answering his question, he simply took Vince’s hand and placed it over his already quite hard erection. 

Vince squeezed very gently, making Frank’s eyes flutter briefly closed. Leaning in to kiss Frank, Vince also walked him backwards to the tiny hotel bed. The backs of Frank’s thighs hit the bedspread, he stripped off his underwear, and let himself fall backwards onto the mattress. Vince usually had a tendency to go right for his dick, but instead he shimmied out of his own underwear and joined Frank side-by-side on the bed. He wrapped one big arm around his waist and intertwined their legs; his other hand was soft on Frank’s face, bridges of their noses touching, and then their lips. 

Frank pushed his tongue into Vince’s mouth, and Vince responded with supple sweetness. Their tongues swept, soft, together, Vince making a noise against Frank’s mouth, pulling their hips closer together. The room was silent-still as they lay together, punctuated only by the occasional sound of a truck driving by. The hand that was on Frank’s face lightly brushed circles against his cheekbone, and Vince’s lips were hot and pliable. Their cocks slid together almost lazily, a warm pull and slip of flesh on flesh. 

After a long while, Vince pulled Frank’s lower lip into his mouth, and Frank gasped, his hands hot on Vince’s ass and chest. He moved one hand up to Vince’s forehead, pushing the hair off his face, and responded in kind, brushing his lips and teeth against the corner of Vince’s mouth, and plunging his tongue back inside. He felt Vince buck against him, and at that, he rolled over on top of him.

Their last few encounters, Vince had set the pace. Frank wasn’t going to let him do that today. 

He kissed Vince’s neck, along his clavicle, down to his smooth, strong chest, and then stalled, kissing all over his pectoral muscles, everywhere but his increasingly stiff nipples. Vince’s head was tilted back against the pillow, his eyes closed, his lip pinned between his teeth, and he ground erratically against Frank from beneath him. His timing had to be careful— he wanted to make Vince squirm a little, but if he took too long, he was no doubt going to flip Frank onto his back and take what he needed from him. 

Between kisses, his hands on Vince’s ribs, Frank investigated. 

“So would you consider yourself a ‘top?’” 

Vince looked up at him with one eye, radiating amusement and disbelief. 

“Not at this particular moment,” he joked. 

Frank laughed like an idiot teenager, a low stupid horny rumble. “I think I would,” he contemplated, still grinning. “Consider myself, that is.”

Brushing the backs of his fingers against Frank’s thinning hair, Vince rumbled, “You sure seem to like it when I pin you down, for a top.”

“Says the man who makes noises like a virgin on prom night when he gets bent over,” Frank teased in return. 

“I just do that ‘cause it gets you all hot and bothered,” Vince lied, punctuated with a disaffected toss of his eyebrows. 

Frank leaned down and took one of Vince’s nipples in his mouth, running the tip of his tongue against the tight, crinkled flesh as he sucked. Vince made a noise that went right to Frank’s dick. He rubbed the other nipple with the pad of his thumb, sucking and squeezing and rubbing and pushing his tongue against it. Vince was vibrating, and Frank could feel the liquidy slip of precum from his cock. 

He released his mouth and shuffled backwards, kissing his way down Vince’s taut belly. He slid his tongue along Vince’s hipbone, down the inside of his thigh, pressing his lips to the side of his sack, the tip of his nose just barely grazing Vince’s cock. He could feel Vince’s thighs tightening under his hands. He opened his mouth and sucked on one of Vince’s balls, still very gentle, still not touching his erection. When Vince was shaking and gasping, he shifted to the left and pressed his tongue against the other testicle before pulling it into his mouth. Vince pressed his hips up against his face. 

Frank sat up. 

“Now that’s just cruel,” Vince whined. He looked at Frank with mock derision. 

Frank palmed Vince’s cock, giving it a few slow, feather-light strokes. Vince shivered.

An idea was forming in Frank’s mind, but he wasn’t sure if they could pull it off considering their current circumstances. 

Leaning to kiss the head of Vince’s cock, wet, with a press of his half-open mouth, he summoned the wherewithal to ask.

“Vince… you have anything we could use for uh.” He made a face, probably unreadable. 

However, Vince seemed to read him loud and clear. “The Lynchboro police kit unfortunately doesn’t come with any Astroglide, Frank.” He squinted one eye shut. “I don’t have any condoms, either, actually.” 

Frank wondered how much he cared about that part. The last person he had had sex with other than Vince was Lillah, as far as he knew, Vince hadn’t been with anyone but Amber since. Well. Since he had stopped sleeping with the criminals he was supposed to be putting away. Lack of lubrication, however, would be a problem. He glanced at Vince’s erect cock, red and glistening at the tip. There was no way that was going inside with just spit.

Before Frank could voice any of this, Vince suggested, “If there’s uh, um,” he stopped, flattening his mouth and wiggling his hand in a circle, “Little hotel toiletries, we could try conditioner…” 

“Do you really think there are toiletries in this hotel?”

“We could ask the kitchen if they’d let us borrow some shortening,” Vince grinned, obviously joking. 

“Forget it, Vince,” Frank shook his head. Another time. At home, preferably. Maybe after a couple of drinks. He sighed. 

Vince touched Frank’s cheek, and Frank found himself leaning into it unselfconsciously. “I mean, if you go slow and I have the option to back out, even shaving cream or something like that might be okay, if you really wanna fuck me that bad.” He made an ever-so-slight grimace. “Long as it’s not mentholated.” 

Frank scratched at the back of his neck. “I was… entertaining the possibility,” he cleared his throat, “Of trying things the other way around. But I don’t think I want to under these circumstances.” 

Practically glittering, Vince smiled a delighted, toothy smile. “Next time, then?”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed, both to the idea of Vince fucking him and to the idea of  _ next time _ . 

They would have to be careful, of course. But they were both good liars. 

He straightened, not wanting to come off as too nervous or, worse, soppy, and then moved to straddle Vince’s chest. 

“Okay,” he began, palming his own cock, “Next best thing, then.” 

Vince put his hand on Frank’s stomach, looking up at him with a bleary-eyed warmth. He tilted his head to the side and licked the head of Frank’s dick, mouth open, eyes closed. Frank felt, and watched, himself twitch against Vince’s tongue. 

“Hey.” Vince brushed his lips against the same spot he had just licked. With the hand that wasn’t resting hot on Frank’s belly, he wiggled his index and middle finger. “We can probably manage without any elbow grease if it’s just this.” 

Frank nodded, more than amenable to that option. He realized with mild embarrassment that it wouldn’t be the first time some handsome tough guy had fingered him with nothing but spit in a shitty hotel room, but it certainly  _ was _ the first time in almost two decades. It was one thing to do that when you were a desperate twenty-something on leave, it was another thing altogether to do that when you were in your forties, heading for divorce, and wore a suit and tie to work every day. 

As usual, contemplating the physical reality of what he and Vince were doing was, frankly, mortifying. 

He grabbed Vince’s hand and put his fingers in his mouth. Vince gasped, and blinking took a moment to collect himself as Frank’s tongue slid across his skin, between his fingers, wet pressure against neglected points of pleasure. Vince took Frank’s cock in his other hand, teasing his lips over the tip, and then plunging him into wet, slick heat. Frank rocked his hips against Vince’s mouth, knowing how Vince got so hot so quick when he fucked him like that. Sliding between his lips, watching his eyes and his eyelashes, feeling the velvety push of his tongue against his cock. Soon, Vince was practically humming— every time Frank pushed deeper into his mouth, he made a tiny, soft noise. 

He pulled out, and stopped sucking on Vince’s fingers. 

Immediately, Vince busied himself slicking Frank up as best he could, spitting on his digits and carefully massaging them into the cleft of his ass. As he slid one finger inside, a thin line of precum dribbled from Frank’s cock onto Vince’s chest. Vince rubbed his thumb over the head of Frank’s erection, and then licked the pad of his thumb. Frank thought he might cum right then. 

Vince licked up the side of Frank’s length, and then pulled his finger out to get additional moisture. He spat, sliding his two fingers together, and this time, he pushed them both into Frank. His mouth came down over Frank’s cock, and immediately Frank began grinding against Vince’s tongue. Oh, good god was he good at this. With each thrust against Vince’s mouth, tight and hot and slippery, a circling of his tongue here, an electric scrape of teeth there, his fingers also drove deeper inside him. The stretch made his whole body feel like pulsing fire— what Vince was doing to him on its own would have been enough to make him come harder than he had an ages, and then there were the  _ noises _ Vince was making, but then he noticed, shit, oh, god, that Vince was touching himself, fucking his hand, cock hard as a steel rod and glistening at the tip, and— 

Frank came hard into Vince’s mouth, ass clenching on his fingers, wet heat spreading slightly around his cock before Vince swallowed. He covered his mouth as he thrust his last against Vince’s willing tongue, gasping and shaking. As soon as Vince released his softening cock, with a deeply amorous and bleary look, Frank slid himself off Vince’s fingers and moved to take Vince into his mouth. He peeled Vince’s hand from his erection, interlaced their fingers, and brought his mouth down as far as he could take him. 

“God, Frank,” Vince muttered, the back of his hand coming up to his mouth. He was close already— Frank could feel him twitching against his tongue. He took the bottom of Vince’s shaft in his hand and worked him with both mouth and palm, and quickly Vince was writhing beneath him, his thighs and ass and stomach muscles clenching and unclenching as he fought to keep control. He came, hard, with Frank’s name on his lips, and Frank managed to swallow through sheer force of will.

He pulled away shakily, wiping spit and cum off his mouth with the back of his hand. He sat back, faintly embarrassed, and bit his lip as he watched Vince come back to earth. 

“You know,” he posited, voice scratchy, “The name I rented the room under was William Stephenson.” 

Vince took a moment to process this, and then snorted. “Sorry I didn’t think to ask whose name I should be screaming.” He sat up, leaning his folded arms against the tops of his knees, and then inched forward to press his lips to Frank’s. 

His lips were soft, very red, a little puffy, and honestly, his mouth tasted like cum. And Frank came very suddenly to the conclusion, as Vinnie tilted his head to kiss him more deeply, that he could very easily fall in love with this man. That he might be halfway there already.

When Vince pulled away, smiling that crooked smile, Frank understood that every time he had tried to talk himself out of another dalliance with Vince, every time he had told himself  _ this is a bad idea _ , that was why. 

A man thinks he gets smarter with age and experience—  _ yeah fucking right. _

He cleared his throat. “Well, I think that was a helpful review of the details of our situation.” 

“Oh yeah,” Vince agreed. “I have a much better grasp on where we’re going with this whole affair, now.”

Frank snorted, and got up to look for his underwear. 

Vince swung his legs out of the bed, looking to do the same. He looked up at the clock. “I hate to dine and dash, but I’m supposed to check in with Volcheck in less than half an hour, and ‘I was fucking my friend from the organized crime squad’ is probably not a great excuse.” 

“I think I would be contractually obligated to have you fired if you said that to someone.” 

Vince literally hooted with laughter. He went into the tiny bathroom, bare-assed, and washed his hands, and then picked his clothes back up piece by piece and put them back on. He kissed Frank again, this time on the cheek, sloppy and affectionate, between his jeans and his shirt. 

On the way out, with his hand on the doorknob, his brows furrowed. He stopped in his tracks, and turned to look at Frank.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Y’think… if things were different—” Vince started, tone light, his shoulder hitching upwards in an oh-so-casual shrug, “Y’know, with you and me. If we weren’t both OCB, or…” He laughed, breathy and awkward. “If the Terranovas had had a daughter, d’you think…” 

He looked Frank hard in the eye, ice blue meeting steel, and paused for what felt like an eternity. 

And then he sighed, pressing his lips together before he spoke. “We might be… something else?” He shrugged again. “More?”

Standing in his half-buttoned slacks, Frank froze. His heart hammered— he felt like he was developing an arrhythmia. It wasn’t like he hadn’t asked himself those same questions many times before. He just wasn’t brave— or stupid— enough to ask them out loud.

He wasn’t quite brave enough to answer them, either. 

He snapped his top snap and smiled weakly at Vince, holding eye contact the same way he had a moment before. 

He nodded, half-grinning like it was all a little funny to contemplate. “In another life.”

Vince jammed his hands in his pockets, one corner of his mouth still quirked up in a sheepish, slightly sorry smirk. 

“I’ll see you, Frank.” 

“See you, Vince.”

And then he was gone.

And then the next day, he was gone for real. 

Bugged out. AWOL. Blew a fuse and flew the coop. 

Frank was terrified, hurt, and  _ furious _ . For the first eight hours he thought Vince had just gone coward on him, and he boiled over with unproductive, momentum-stopping anger. Vince  _ knew better _ . He  _ was _ better than that. And goddammit, god  _ fucking _ dammit, how  _ dare _ he say what he said yesterday and then disappear on him. And steal his damn car, on top of it all.

When he finally calmed down just enough for it to click, Frank broke into an immediate cold sweat. 

Stem wasn’t the first man Vince had seen electrocute himself.  _ Steelgrave _ was. 

Frank had known— or, suspected, at least— even then, that Vince was in love with Steelgrave. Initially he had thought it was part of the game, that Vince had seen Steelgrave had that particular weakness and taken advantage of it. But the longer he worked the case, the more it became clear that Vince had blinded himself to the kind of man Steelgrave was. That he truly  _ cared _ about him. The idea had revolted him. He had pretended he didn’t see it, while simultaneously girding himself for the very real possibility that Vince would fail in his duties, and that he could not be trusted as long as he was by Steelgrave’s side. 

He suspected, earnestly, that if Steelgrave hadn’t killed Patrice on camera, Vince might be working for the mob for real.

Like what had happened to Vince in prison— what Frank had allowed to happen— it was a subject they never spoke on. They never talked about what had happened when Vince and Steelgrave were trapped for hours in that theatre. They never talked about how Vince must have felt watching him die. They never talked about the fact that, at the time, Vince had told Frank he would have rather it been him, and that he had meant it. They never talked about Vince’s clearly, deeply broken heart. Therapy had seemed to help, at least a little. And then once he jumped back into work, he seemed very much his old self again. He didn’t talk about Steelgrave, and Frank sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up himself.

Initially, the idea of Steelgrave getting his hands on Vince merely gave Frank the shivers. He was a slimeball, diseased. Thinking about it was like thinking about drinking a glass of the Hudson. But… as Frank had grown to like Vince, instead, he found himself growing vaguely jealous of a dead man. So he was happy to avoid the topic as long as Vince was. 

If they  _ had _ talked about it… if Frank had been a little braver, if he had asked Vince to be honest with him… if he had taken the time to understand  _ why _ he had loved someone like that… if he could have done  _ anything _ to take the fear and the hurt and reduce it by even the tiniest amount— 

Frank choked back a guttural noise of despair, sitting in his room at Volcheck’s estate. He sat on the side of the bed with the phone receiver in his hand. Every time he talked to Dan, every time he had to ask him if he had heard anything about Vince and he  _ knew _ what the answer was going to be, something inside him shattered a little bit more. He missed him so goddamn much. The lump he had had in his throat since Vince left the police station seemed to grow bigger with every passing hour. Every time the phone rang, or someone came to tell him something, he assumed the next words he was going to hear were ‘ _ Vince is dead _ .’ 

He was edgy and nervous and on the border of snapping or bursting into desperate, unmanly tears at every turn. He had even spilled his guts to Lococco, of all people.

Lococco, who was, as Frank had suspected, not dead, and who, as Frank had  _ not _ suspected, Vince had been in contact with the whole time. Lococco, who Vince had apparently trusted with his plans and his feelings when he couldn’t trust Frank. Lococco, who was a smug, arrogant bastard, and who Frank now needed if he had any hope of wrapping this damn case and getting his ass to wherever the hell Vince was. 

Lococco, who decided to  _ fuck up  _ the case, and then have the gall to tell Frank it was what Vince would’ve done, too. 

Lococco, who had the gall to be  _ right _ . The gall to  _ know _ Vince, and to throw it in Frank's face like that. 

He seemed to know about Steelgrave. Frank wondered if Lococco knew about him, too, or if he had even rated a discussion. 

On the road to Seattle, Frank pulled over and vomited up what felt like the last week’s meals. He thought he felt fine; after all, with Volcheck no longer an issue, he was free to go help find his friend. But puking his guts up in ankle deep snow on some rural highway, the same questions kept repeating in his mind:

_ What if it's too late?  _

_ What if Vince never wants to see you again? _

_ What if he's dead? _

_ What if he killed himself?  _

_ What if this has put him right back where he was in '88, and he's decided to follow after Steelgrave? _

At Dan’s new beau’s apartment, he was barely verbal. He kept  _ swallowing _ , god, god, there was so much  _ saliva _ in his mouth, and— and what could he say in front of this strange woman? Hell— it’s not like he could say anything in front of Dan, either. As far as he knew, he and Vince just bickered all the time. The weren’t a  _ thing _ . He wasn’t going to  _ out _ himself, not now, not when he needed Dan and Dan’s friendship more than ever before. 

Quietly, before they left to go check out the flophouse where Vince had been staying, Dan elbowed him and smiled. “Y’hoping maybe it’ll work like a magnet?”

“Huh?”

“You,” he gestured, “You look like you borrowed his clothes.” 

Frank looked down at his outfit. Jeans. Leather jacket. Blue t-shirt. 

_ Christ almighty.  _

He changed before they left. Dan looked at him like he had lost his marbles. Maybe he had. God, he just missed him so much. He could barely think straight— the endless, pulsing alert in his brain screaming every awful thing that could have happened to Vince as a minute-by-minute update made any more useful cognition nearly impossible. If he found him, if Vince  _ let _ them find him, he would never let him go ever again. He would stop dancing around his feelings, he would stop pushing him away, he would tell him how much he meant to him, he— 

But god, what if he didn’t find him? What if Vince had really killed those two men in cold blood? What if he was on the run? Frank didn’t break the rules, he— he just— 

He stared at Vince’s empty bed, this horrible grey slab, this coffin for human refuse, this awful place that he had  _ left him _ to hide in, this— 

And now Dan was yelling at him for saying Vince  _ murdered _ those men, like the word really mattered, like any of it mattered other than finding him, like he would even care at this point if he  _ had _ murdered them, like— 

The new woman— she had a name, but god, nothing was sticking— she made them stop arguing. He wanted to tell Dan that he was just scared. That he just needed to see Vince’s face. That he didn’t care what he did, he just needed to hold him, that he just—  _ god,  _ that he loved him. ‘By the way, Uncle Mike, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with Vince, or at the very least I love him in a way that would be incestuous to call  _ familial _ but also he’s my family and I need him back right now and I hope you’re fine with the fact that I’ve gone queer on you here but the fact is I play for both teams and I always have I’m just deeply ashamed of that fact and if we’re talking facts then well, factually speaking, the same fact is true for Vince and you’re just surrounded, buddy.’ Yeah right. Yeah right. Fucking sure, that’s what he’d say.

And then Dan used that word—  _ family _ — and Frank felt the bile rise in his throat and he wondered how much longer he could hold on through all this and he thought about how obvious it was that he wasn’t okay and he tried to remember where the bathroom was in this apartment and he— something clicked. Family. Pete. The church. If Vince were really in trouble, if he really needed something no one else could give him, that’s where he would go.

And for the next few hours, Frank’s brain function returned. He had a task set before him, and he knew he was right. They went down the list of Roman Catholic churches in Seattle, and he got lectured at by a thousand old men who smelled like incense, and then all the pieces fell into place. He found him. 

Watching Vince’s back, denim clad, shoulders hunched, he felt like a missing limb had grown back. He let himself think it— let himself say inside his mind,  _ I love him _ ,  _ I love this stupid bastard, I love Vincent Terranova _ — even as he listened with a dagger poised over his heart. He was terrified that the next few words out of Vince’s mouth were going to be ‘I left because I hate McPike’ or ‘I left because I never really got over Steelgrave and blame McPike for his death’ or just ‘I quit and I never want to see any of the other OCB agents again.’ But they weren’t. Not knowing he was there, he practically apologized. He talked about his own hurt and fear and Frank forgave him for everything. 

When Vince turned and saw him, he was close to tears. He didn’t care. He approached Vince, carefully, slowly, in the manner of a shy animal, and Vince threw his arms around him. Frank held him in return, their faces pressed together. He hoped Father Pat wasn’t a particularly homophobic Catholic priest, because he suspected it was fairly obvious that this was not a typical ‘federal agents’ sort of relationship. 

“Frank,” Vince whispered into his skin. “I’m sorry I ran out on you, Frank.” He gasped, fingers digging into Frank’s shoulder. “I know you’re mad at me, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Frank wanted to kiss his cheek, take his head in his hands, tell him he wasn’t mad at him, couldn’t be mad at him, just was happy to have him back. 

Looking up and off into the distance, breathing in deep gulps, trying not to let the tears that were pooling just over his eyelids spill out, he turned it into a joke. “It’s alright.” He took a shaky breath in. “We have plenty of time for my bad temper later. I’m just glad you’re alright.”

Snuffling, probably crying onto his jacket, Vince tried to keep explaining. He didn’t need to. Frank understood. But Vince tried anyway. 

“I just got some peace here, y’know? And I need that right now.” He squeezed Frank tighter to him. “Okay?” 

Frank resisted the urge to bury his face in Vince’s neck, to cry with him, to tell him they could both just quit and become couch salesmen or something, if it meant he’d never feel like he had to run away again. 

But he just took another deep breath in and agreed. “I understand.”

Vince released him, slowly, not really taking his hands off him. Very briefly, he cupped the side of his face, the look in his eyes like a wounded deer, and yet desperate and thick with longing. A second later— less than a second— it was on his shoulder, chaste and manly. Frank could feel the priest’s eyes on them. He hoped once again that if they looked as obvious as he felt, Father Pat leaned more towards ‘God’s all-encompassing love’ than ‘eternal hellfire for sinners and pharisees.’ 

He stepped back, awkward, feeling like he might be being broken up with. 

A real laugh considering he had more or less ‘broken up’ with Vince three or four times now. 

“How would you like me to handle this?” Frank swallowed. For Vince, and for Vince only, he would break the rules. Any of them or all of them. “Like I never saw you?” He would be heartbroken if Vince said yes, but he would understand. And he would do it. No one would ever hear about what happened to Vincent Terranova. 

“I don’t know.” Vince shook his head, eyes darting this way and that. “I don’t know much of anything right now.” He just looked like  _ everything _ hurt. Like he had been hurting his whole life, and it just now caught up with him. “Except that I get some comfort here.” He said this last phrase almost guiltily, like it was a surprise to even himself, like he wished Frank didn’t have to know. Frank could hear what couldn’t be spoken aloud in front of Father Pat— that he was sorry he couldn’t get this same comfort by Frank’s side. 

Father Pat interrupted, stepping forward into their little circle of misery. He was either exceptionally good at reading the room, or exceptionally bad. “I haven’t done this in a while—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Vince suggested, a tone of warning in his voice. 

Frank took a second to cotton on— the press conference. Father Pat was probably trying to distract them from any further weepy confessions and clinging in his church. 

“Oh, no,” the priest pressed, shaking his head. “The H.E.S. can’t be dumping poisons without somebody answering for it.” He looked at Frank. “Why don’t you and Vince wait in the rectory.” The unspoken word:  _ alone _ . 

Perhaps this guy was not your average priest. 

“It’ll take about five minutes.”

“Thanks, Father.” Vince spoke to Father Pat, but he had barely taken his eyes off Frank since they stopping holding each other.

Vince tipped his head in the direction of the rectory and—  _ shit _ , god, Frank winced, stunned, pain lancing through his chest and arm, did he  _ pull _ something, was he having a heart at— 

He was on the ground, somehow, and—

Everything was so  _ loud _ and his arms were moving but he wasn’t  _ making _ them move and— 

And then, then, he felt Vinnie’s hand, heard his voice, and—

And he didn’t hear anything else. 

And he wanted to look at Vince, but everything was dark. 

And he wanted to say something to him, but no sounds were coming out.

And then it was still, and dark, and empty, for a long, long time.

He dreamt, maybe.

Of bells. The belltower— that’s what he had wanted to say. That he saw someone make a run for the belltower. If Vince knew, maybe he could catch him. He dreamt of dogs. Or maybe he dreamt he  _ was _ a dog? Except— he didn’t think of himself as a dog. If anyone was a dog, it was Vince. Loyal, affectionate, playful, but not above the occasional bite— yeah, Vince was the dog, not him. Except it  _ was _ him, maybe. In the dream. It was hard to tell. He kept thinking he was waking up, waking up to tell Vince something— to tell him about the bells. Or to tell him, tell him keep a better eye on that damn dog of his, because one of these days it was going to wander into the street and get hit by a car. Did Vince have a dog? Wait. No. It was the bells he was supposed to tell him about, not the dog. Not the bells— the belltower. 

Or was he supposed to tell him that he— ?

He wondered, or dreamt, or dreamt about wondering: was he dead? Did the dead dream? If he wasn’t dead, why did it seem like he couldn’t manage to wake up?

He just kept thinking about needing to tell Vince.

But he couldn’t remember what it was he needed to tell him.

He repeated the words he needed to say over and over again, but he couldn’t hear himself. He knew he knew them. Otherwise how could he say them? But he couldn’t seem to tell himself what it was he needed to know. 

Sometimes it felt like Vince was right beside him, dipping into the quiet dark himself, lowering himself into the fog. Dog. No, fog. Definitely fog. He missed him, in  _ here _ , wherever  _ here _ was— a dream, purgatory, a dream of purgatory, a waking hell, a sleeping emptiness where— where he missed Vince. If he could tell him what he needed to tell him, he would feel so much better. So he kept reminding himself of the words. Not the words themselves, of course. He didn’t know the words, not on the outside. Only on the inside. So he repeated them, inaudible, hoping maybe he’d know what it was he was saying when he woke up. Or when he stopped being dead, if that was an option. He hoped it was an option.

He was still repeating the words, mumbling to himself, when he woke up.

To the sound of bells, he silently mouthed  _ I love you, you know _ to no one and nothing in particular. He was alone, but he could— he could see the ceiling, and— oh god, an IV? And— oh. He was in the hospital. He remembered falling to the floor. Shot. Not a heart attack. He tried to move, but couldn’t seem to gain control over anything larger than his eyeballs. Where was Vince? He hadn’t been— 

Cold, raw and emotional, overrode the anaesthetic. 

He tried to call for Vince, but nothing came out.

From afar, he heard someone call for a doctor. 

Why was he alone? How long had he been out?  _ Where was Vince? _

“Mr. McPike?” A black-haired woman with a round brown face, someone he didn’t know, came in and touched the backs of her fingers to his head. “Can you hear me?”

Frank managed to nod. 

The woman called again for a doctor. 

“You can understand what I’m saying?”

Frank nodded again.

He cracked out a  _ wh _ sound, but couldn’t manage the rest of his question.

“Water?” 

Well. Not what he was trying for, but not a terrible suggestion, either. He nodded.

She dashed out and came back with a cup full of ice chips, and ever so slightly tilted his bed up so he wouldn’t choke. “Can you hold this, do you think? Or do you want me to?”

Frank tried to move his fingertips, and found that he could. He reached, shakily, for the cup.

She slipped the first ice chip between his lips anyway. 

When he had swallowed, he croaked, “Whr’s—”

At that, the doctor came in. Immediately, the doctor started asking questions and running tests. Frank answered as best he could, interrupting every few words to try and ask his question— he just wanted to know where Vince was. By the time the doctor’s questions had slowed enough to let him get a word in edgewise, he didn’t need an answer, because he had one already.

He was at the door, with a grin on his face and tears in his eyes, Dan and Nona not far behind. Vince barrelled into the room like he was going to tackle the doctor, yelling “ _ Frank!” _ at the top of his lungs. 

He practically skidded to a stop in front of his bed.

And, god almighty, the idiot— Vince took Frank’s face in his hands and kissed him. 

It wasn’t a full-on lip-lock, but it was closer to the mouth than the cheek. The doctor and the nurse both went silent as Vince grabbed Frank’s hand and buried his head into his arm.

He was going to kill Vince, but not before they both got fired. 

Dan, thank god, broke the silence. He laughed, like this was all in good fun, and asked, “Jeez, I don’t have to kiss you, right, Frank?”

“Please do not,” Frank croaked, and the tension was broken. The doctor and the nurse started moving again, and even Vince snorted tearful laughter into Frank’s arm. 

They explained what had happened to him, how long he had been out, that there was still a chance he had some sort of brain damage (Frank nearly decided to slip back into a coma hearing that one) but that things were looking promising, and talked him through how much longer he’d likely be in the hospital. It was a long time. Vince and Dan and Nona took shifts keeping him company throughout the rest of the day as he started to be able to move and talk and eat normally. Vince maybe held his hand a little too much for propriety’s sake, but Frank found himself unwilling to unclasp their palms, either, so he let it go. Dan told him what the doctors wouldn’t— about how he flatlined, and Vince somehow strong-armed his ghost back into his body— about the Kousakis in the belltower and Vince fixing the bells at the church. That he had woken up right when Vince pulled the cord. Despite the hole in his chest and the fact that his brain might not work correctly anymore, everything felt… more  _ right _ than it had in months. 

Hell of a midlife crisis.

That is, until Vince and Dan and Nona went back to the hotel.

The nurse— the same round-faced girl with black hair— came in and knelt by Frank’s bed. She acted at fixing a sensor and fluffing Frank’s pillow, and very quietly, with great pity in her voice, explained, “I’m sorry we couldn’t let your partner stay.”

Frank shook his head very slightly, smiling reassuringly at the nurse. “It’s fine. I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow.” 

“I think it’s cruel that hospital policy is not to recognize domestic partnerships,” she continued, and Frank’s smile froze. “You know, we’ll let wives stay the night in circumstances like this, and—” She shook her head. “It’s 1990! We just have so much catching up to do.”

“He—” Frank swallowed, his heart beating like it was trying to percussively tunnel out of his chest. “Vince isn’t— partner like  _ cops _ , not partner like—” 

“Oh,” she paused in her useless fixing of the perfectly functioning instruments, hand coming softly to her lips. “I forgot you’re federal agents.” She smiled weakly. “But I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise.” 

Frank squeezed his eyes shut. Now she thought he was just telling her to be hush-hush about it. “We’re not a couple. I’m not—” He paused, which was definitely a misstep in trying to sound convincing, but maybe he could chalk it up to the brain damage. “I’m not gay. I’m married. To a woman.”

_ Ah yes. Because nothing said ‘earnestly heterosexual’ like making the extra effort to clarify that your wife, is, in fact, a woman.  _

The nurse’s eyebrows drifted upwards and her mouth pinched closed. 

“Where is… your wife?” 

That was a good question. Did Jenny even know he had been shot? Had Vince and Dan called her? Did Drake know?

“She’s still on the East Coast,” he waffled, feeling how unconvincing this was as he said it. He hadn’t been wearing his wedding ring since what had happened with Royce. He hesitated before explaining, “We’re… separated.” 

_ Yeah. Very convincing. She definitely wasn’t a made-up wife to cover for his blue-eyed tough guy boyfriend who openly kissed him in the hospital in front of a bunch of strangers. _

The nurse seemed to turn inward, growing quiet and distant. She then smiled and patted Frank on the knee. “I’m sorry to hear that. About your wife.” She finished fiddling with the equipment and moved to leave. “It must be very hard being separated from the people you care about. Have a good night, Mr. McPike. If you need anything, I’ll be here for the next few hours, and then the night shift nurse comes on.”

She left Frank with the distinct impression that she was unconvinced, and that now she thought he wasn’t just a gay man, but a  _ self-hating depressed closeted _ gay man. 

Maybe he was a lot of those things.

If it got out that this was how they behaved together at the hospital, well… worst case scenario, they would be fired. Stripped of any security clearance or honors. And there was a possibility that they would lose even their pensions— in essence, a dishonorable discharge from the OCB. Best case scenario, the powers that be would determine that they had lost their objectivity and needed to be separated. He’d be paired with a new agent, and Vince would get assigned a new handler.

Vince… might not survive that right now. 

He covered his face with the back of his hand. He needed to keep the distance. Tomorrow, he would have to tell Vince about the nurse and ask him to cut out the touchy-feely crap. That when he told him they could only be together in another life, he meant it. That no matter how much they cared about each other, if they wanted to protect one another, it would have to be business as usual from here on in. 

Just another opportunity to break the man’s heart. And his own.

_ I love you _ had been on his lips when he woke.

In the fluorescent reality of the hospital room, his eyes too dry for tears, he knew he would never again come so close to speaking those words aloud.

**Author's Note:**

> So much like the Steelgrave arc pretty much ends with a canon confessional between Vinnie and Sonny, S3 pretty much ends with a canon confession from Vinnie to Frank-- "I can't imagine life without you" followed by a kiss is, uh, it's a lot. And then there's the fact that Frank is brought back from death not once, but TWICE, by a call to live from Vinnie. There's not much one can do to put the genie back in the bottle after that, but since Season 4 starts with VINNIE BEING KIDNAPPED BY A DEATH SQUAD AND BEING DECLARED DECEASED, I guess they didn't really *have* to backpedal on anything. EXCEPT THEY DID ANYWAY AND FRANK TALKS ABOUT VINNIE'S "THING FOR REDHEADS" IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON FOUR. 
> 
> SO GUESS WHAT BITCHES, "I never lost the distance" ARE NOW ARC WORDS BECAUSE I'M A BAD PERSON AND WANT YOU TO HURT AS MUCH AS I DO
> 
> FRANK SABOTAGES THEIR RELATIONSHIP BEFORE IT BEGINS BECAUSE HE'S AFRAID OF GETTING HURT AND THEN HE LOSES HIM ANYWAY
> 
> I'M GOING TO GNAW MY ARM OFF AND CRY


End file.
